Around 6pm storms began firing just east of the dryline west and southwest of Tulsa, OK. I was located near Henryetta, OK but i started north after seeing storm clouds going up west of Tulsa.

I made it about halfway to Tulsa and just north of Okmulgee when other storms began to pop up to my west.

Since the first storm (it was the strongest) was to my northwest heading northeast fairly quickly i decided to sit tight and wait for the new storms to continue to develop and head my direction. I stopped near Beggs, OK and waited.

The cloud thats on the left (the wide and short one in the above picture) continued to slowly develop.

Time Lapse of Storm (17mins into 25 secs)
This storm continued northeast near Tulsa. On the other side of Tulsa (NE) tornado warnings were issued. This storm was the supercell that was north of the Benton County supercell and affected NE Oklahoma and SW Missouri and put down what the NWS Springfield is calling several areas of F3 tornado damage. NWS SGF

As that storm moved away my attention was drawn to the southwest where a new southern storm was coming into view.

(this is the Benton County supercell early on taken at 625pm)

This storm originated about 20 miles SSW of Shawnee, OK with the first radar echoes showing up at 6:01 pm. It was headed NE which meant it was pretty well heading straight for me.

Just like the storm to its north it developed very slowly. At about 6:40 pm the NWS (National Weather Service) in Tulsa issued a T-Storm warning for the storm.

(picture taken at 6:55 pm)

The storm seemed to be increasing in intensity nicely and lightning increased rapidly.

I retreated south to avoid potential hail. For the next 30 minutes or so the storm was pretty much in a steady state. The lightning however completely stopped and there wasnt a lot of rain/hail either. Garrett Lewis (kfsm meteorologist) called me and told me there was strong rotation just to my west but without lightning it was difficult to see anything.

The storm at this point was what we call a LP Supercell (Low Precipitation). LP Supercells are prolific hail producers (sometimes only producing hail...and no rain!) but they are poor tornado producers. I found a nice vantage point and illuminated from the town of Beggs, OK and the moon there was just enough light to see what stormchasers call "the mothership". It it common in LP supercells. Here is a example of a mothership look in daytime

Here is how it looked at night (this was about a 4 minute exposure)

(taken at about 7:55pm and unfortunately a little too close to get entire view of the lowering)

As the storm crossed hwy 75 lightning began to increase. In about 20 minutes it went from no lightning to continuous. It was very impressive to see a storm change as fast as it did. It obviously came into better moisture and dynamics because it changed from the lp to a more classic supercell in less than 30 minutes. It was like a switch had been flipped. The storm also increased in speed away from me. I had little chance to keep up at this point as i would have to travel through Muskogee and then through the hills of NE Oklahoma so i stopped and took some pictures of the lightning illuminating the growing storm from within.

(taken at 8:10 pm)

This picture below was taken at 8:30pm when the storm was just put under a tornado warning

This last picture was taken at 8:38 pm as the storm was now around 50 miles away.

 

The Storms of March 12, 2006